


Old Boy

by TF Grognon (gloss)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Ghosts, M/M, Rough Kissing, Upright Scholarship Student/Dissolute Spoiled Delinquent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24513418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/TF%20Grognon
Summary: There’s a kid bleeding in the stacks.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Original Characters & Original Works Flash Exchange May 2020





	Old Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



The Cutter School dress code had not changed for well over thirty years. There were murmurings in the early 90s that perhaps “Hammer” or “harem” pants ought to be explicitly outlawed, but upon reflection, trustees and administration alike concluded that there was very little chance of any boy showing up to class in those dreadful things. The code was elegantly simple. It specified blue blazer; button-down Oxford shirt; necktie; and plain-front trousers with non-athletic shoes. What’s more, the usual sources for boys’ school clothing, whether Brooks Brothers or J.Press, rarely changed the styles. At a glance, one school picture matched another, a decade or two older. Even under scrutiny — and Alex had definitely studied yearbooks as he tried to learn not just what to wear, but how to wear it — the differences were minor, mostly concerning length of hair.

All of this meant that Alex did not, at first, notice anything out of the ordinary about the kid slumped over the group study table. Since he still had to finish shelving the books left on his cart, he just hoped that the guy would be gone by the time he did his last rounds of the stacks for the evening. He worked four shifts in the library a week as part of his scholarship. It could have been worse, of course. A generation ago, charity cases like him still served food in the dining hall and bussed the tables afterward.

The library was dark, lit only by the low sconces at the end of each row of shoulder-high bookcases. He padded noiselessly on the carpet as he wove up and down the stacks, shelving and removing the day's detritus (wadded-up notebook pages, erasers, some unsettlingly damp Kleenex), and arrived back at the table. Sleeping Beauty was still there, head pillowed on his arms, long legs splayed in the chair. His elbow was so sharp that it nearly poked through his blazer. Alex noticed the rip on one blazer cuff; its brass button hung by a thread. He thought caught the scent of a hint of a bonfire, but here on the second floor of the library, there were no windows that opened.

“Hey, man,” he whispered, then, when that didn’t work, more loudly: “Dude, it’s almost time for Study Hall. Up and at ‘em.”

The mahogany table creaked a bit as the kid stirred. He straightened up, blinking confusedly toward Alex. His blond hair, oddly long and shapeless, like it had simply grown out from a regular cut, fell away from his sharp-featured, handsome face. His nose was bleeding, looked like it had been bleeding for a while. The blood was streaky, forking over his mouth, and drying in a smear across his chin. He had ash, or more blood, smudged along his hairline and down one temple.

“Shit, dude, are you okay?” As Alex came closer, the air-conditioning must have come on, because he felt much colder. “You need to go the nurse?”

“Who, Ratchet? No way!” The guy reared back, as if Alex had threatened to bundle him off himself. “I’m all right.”

This close, through some trick of the emergency light over the door behind him, the kid seemed half-luminous, silvery more than anything. Except for the blood on his mouth, which was black. Oily where it was wet, flakes of charcoal where dry. His eyes were wide but shadowed; he looked far from all right.

“Here, take this.” Alex dug out a wadded paper napkin from his back pocket. “What happened?”

“Fucking bogus,” the kid muttered, dabbing the wad under his nose and wincing. He cleared his throat and hocked into the napkin. When he spoke again, he sounded much clearer. His teeth were bloody. “Went back on a goddamn sweet deal, jumped me and left me.... And now I’m....” He paused and squinted at Alex. “Who are you? What dorm are you in?”

“Alex Chamseddine. Abbott, third floor.”

The guy laughed. “Fuck out of here.”

“Excuse me?” Remembering the time, Alex reached out to hurry the kid up. “Look, we really need to get going. Study Hall’s in like five minutes.”

“I’m on the second floor of Abbott. Think I’d remember you, you know?”

Alex shrugged. He knew exactly what he meant; it wasn’t as if he could blend in with all the white kids.

And still the guy pushed. “Chamseddine, what is that? French?”

“Lebanese.” He’d gotten better at not offering extra details. He used to try to explain about the surname, his features, the fact that his mom was black but lighter-skinned than Alex at the height of his summer tan. After half a year at Cutter, he was sick of explaining. It didn’t change anything and only led to more questions and blanker stares.

“Leba—? Man, what is this bullshit?”

He was standing now, unsteady on his feet. About Alex’s height, but skinnier, not that Alex was any kind of athletic specimen. When he stumbled again, Alex gave him his arm to hold.

“Which bullshit?” Alex asked. “There's so much to choose from."

“Bo,” the kid said, alternately chuckling at Alex's comment and sighing, like it was hard to breathe. He was leaning heavily against Alex. His hair smelled like smoke, too. Bonfire, but also tangy cigarette and skunky weed. “Me. Nathaniel Bowditch Sumner.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alex replied, guiding them awkwardly down the aisle between the two nearest stacks. Where Bo touched him, hip to shoulder, left Alex feeling tingly, that warm prickling chill of a very bad sunburn, despite the layers of clothes between them. 

“Who put you up to this, Lesbian Alex?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Alex confessed. They’d reached the broad staircase that led down to the main library floor.

“This prank.”

“There's no prank.”

Bo stood fast and would not move down the stairs. He did not seem to notice them, actually. They could have been standing in front of a blank wall for all he acknowledged them.

“Look at me.” Bo’s tone was harsh, impossible to ignore. 

“Study Hall —” Alex knew, rationally, that he could hardly be kicked out for being caught outside and late to check in. His determination, however, to keep his head down and not draw undue attention meant that he feared exactly that.

Still harsh, but straining now as well: “ _Please,_ man.”

Alex turned to face him. Bo wavered slightly and Alex put his hands on Bo’s waist to steady him. One of his shirt-tails hung outside his trousers. His tie, wrenched loose in his collar, was muddy. His pelvis was sharp under the heels of Alex's palms.

“Looking,” Alex said. He’d never stood this close to another guy before. Not in any intimate way. In line for the showers, at the dining hall, sure. But not alone, not touching, not like it meant something.

Cocking his head, returning Alex's gaze, Bo bit his lower lip. His hair — still silvery, though there was much better ambient light here — slid across his eyes and he twitched irritably to move it. When Alex reached up to help, Bo pressed his cheek against his palm. That sunburn tingle returned, but stronger and agonizing now. It streamed in forking paths down Alex’s chest into his groin.

“Really need to get you cleaned up,” he said. His thumb stroked the drying blood at the corner of Bo’s plump lips. The touch burned, but did not seem to disturb the blood. Even when he scratched lightly with his thumbnail, the blood remained in place.

Bo surged up and forward, arms looping like a noose around Alex’s neck, pulling him down and in, and kissed him with open, bleeding mouth and sharp teeth and anxious, feral tongue. Alex backed up, hit the banister to the stairway, and clung more tightly to Bo. He’d never kissed anyone like this, open-mouthed and _hungry_. He was soaring and devouring, and he lost the capacity to breathe. His dick was hard, his heart was enormous and thundering, and he wanted, so badly, everything, all at once.

“Thanks,” Bo said as the kiss broke the way storm clouds pass and he retreated into the shadows. Alex blinked, several times, tears or sweat caught on his lashes and gumming his vision. Bo became a silvery shaft, then a dull one, then just a brighter spot among the dark that finally sank away, out of sight.

Alex tasted blood in his own mouth, fresh as well as old and sour. Sticky. Everywhere they'd touched was scraped raw, from his palms to his face and down his torso. He all but floated down the stairs.


End file.
